Finally, in regard to the continuity of the movement-that incessant but gradual turning away from the point of departure (but in constant relation to the point of rest, and with a constant tendency to return, and to a completion, as it were, of the circuit-the definition of a poem )— in this respect it is to be observed, that the continuity of this poem is strictly lyrical: namely, is such as is proper to a poem which is meant to be sung with an instrumental accompaniment. And without reasoning upon the grounds of the difference in the treatment hence arising, we will simply remind such readers as may feel inclined to consider the matter further, that the characteristics of the lyrical movement are two. First, the successive links of the chain are unjointed, and become a chain by virtue of the accompaniment, which passes over the intervals as the electric power leaps the intervals in a series of conductors. Secondly, by each particular link, as by a conductor, the feeling is transmitted, but the thought essentially repeated-causing a pure lyric to seem comparatively poor in the reading.

This may be better understood, perhaps, by comparing the Ode to a Girl with the following little composition, in which a similar feeling is treated in a manner properly poetical, as contradistinguished from what is properly lyrical. It will be observed that every step in the movement of this little piece, almost every word, presents a new image or thought; and that the feeling, by virtue of which the whole as a whole, is not developed fully till the close.

Δέδυκε μεν ἁ Σελανα

Και Πληιαδες, μέσαι δε
Νυκτες, παρα δ' ερχεται ὡρα
Εγω δε μονα καθεύδω.

The moon is set

The Pleiades-the Night half gone-
The Hour has passed away; and yet

I lie alone!

Here is no enumeration of symptoms, all indicating the same disorder; but there is a story, though of few incidents; a progression; an unfolding the sentiment by bright degrees its face discovering. We are with the poet in her darkened chamber; we look out with her upon the night-shining sea, and watch the half-moon slowly sinking below the line of the horizon, and the disappearing Pleiades. The night already wanes, and is heard a sigh that makes its lapse significant-"the hour is passed"—and she shares her couch with impatient and disappointed passions.

But the Ode to Venus is, after all, the finest relic of Sappho. It is likewise by far the most difficult to translate. We have tried iambic, trochaic, and anapastic verse, but without being able to satisfy ourselves with any. We put a strophe or two into English Sapphics, but these did not answer; nor do any translations that we have seen so much as afford us pleasure. The very best have a hard, uniform rapidity,

utterly unlike the alternate rush and pause—the quasi discords of Sappho's melodized passion-still recurring, and still resolving themselves into music. The following, therefore, must be considered as a mere approximation to a genuine version, of which we think we possess the true idea, though ignorant how to realize it.

And wherefore I had called thee from the skies
To visit me again.

What I would especially

Thou for my wild soul should'st do;
And held in sweet captivity

By what new longing,

To re-ensnare it I endeavored ;-" Who,
Sappho! thy love is wronging?

For and if he flee thy call,

Quickly he shall follow thee;

And though he takes not gifts, he shall
Give them unsought;

And even if he love not, love shall he,
Although thou wish it not."

Come again then unto me,

From disquiets free my heart;

And what my soul desires to be

Done for it, do;

In the love-contest, Goddess, take my part,

And be mine ally true!

The flight of Venus from Heaven through the air, and the swift flying of the sparrows frequently waving their wings above the dark carth, are one of the most aniinated pictures. But the ode is chiefly remarkable for its grace of words-that charming propriety in the choice, and, (if we may so express it,) in the handling of language, which is the universal method of poetry; and which, though it be a beauty the most difficult of all to transfer from one speech into another, is yet precisely that most necessary to be preserved in a genuine version.

It may be observed that Sappho possessed what has been called, very properly, the dramatic imagination, namely, that which reduces many images to one--expresses many thoughts as one, (the function this of imagination; its result the definition of poetry, as distinguished from a poem,) by bringing these close to us, by presenting them, that is to say, in such a whole as can be comprehended at once as a whole, and in its parts. It is called so in opposition to the epic imagination, or that which accomplishes a like result by throwing its proper images or thoughts into distance; that is, by presenting them in such a whole as can be seen as a whole only when its parts become lost. One of the simplest and most direct instances of the latter is the description of a Greek phalanx, suppose, in the thirteenth book of the Iliad. The following is a translation.

Bristled the murderous battle with long spears,
Sharp, which they held; the eyes were blinded by
The glave of brass, from helmets gleaming bright,
From breastplates polished new, and shining shields,
Coming together onward: bold his heart

Who, seeing this, admired, but trembled not.

Here we have all the glittering circumstances enumerated in the first four lines disappearing in the image presented by the first segment of the fifth, of a brilliant but indistinct mass advancing as one body. Many remarkable examples of the dramatic imagination are to be found in the writings of Simonides, who was reckoned one of the nine Lyric poets. The following inscription for a tomb is one of these; we give the Greek; 'tis but a line and most musical.

Σάμα τόδε Σπίνθηρι πατήρ ἐπέθηκε θανόντι.

This mound o'er Spinther dead his father piled.

We have here the force of the imagination involved in, not an image, but an idea; and yet, although ideas do tend to the subtile and vague, we have likewise the greatest distinctness, as well of the parts as of the whole; the manifold associations developed are developed clearly and made emphatic; the idea expressed becomes poetic so far as those contained are not merged, but rendered apparent therein. We shall presently give an epigram of Sappho's, in which this is exemplified in a peculiarly interesting manner.

It is to be understood that our poetess was what we might call the principal of the female academy at Lesbos, that is to say, she taught the

Greek maidens poetry, and perhaps philosophy, and the accomplishments of the age. An instructor of either sex was in those days an honored personage; and Sappho, who adored her pupils, was dearly loved by them in return. Indeed, she appears to have been very estimable as a woman, although she did not escape the slanders to which her genius and her fame naturally exposed her. We hear little indeed of her husband, (for she was married,) but her fondness for her child partook of that enthusiasm which marked her general character. Despite the voice of antiquity affirming the fact, it seems very doubtful if she really flung herself, as is generally received, from the Leucadian cliff. Her love for Phaon, admitting that it existed, does not appear to have been otherwise than virtuous, and if it was so fatally violent as is represented, goes a great way to disprove the charge of general laxity of con. duct, and in particular of unnatural immoralities. A very beautiful line by her famous lover Alcæus altogether favors this charitable hypothesis:ιοπλόκ', αγνα, μειλιχόμειδα Σαπφοι.

Violet-wreathed, chaste, honey-sweet-smiling Sappho !

The first epithet, the reader will understand, is an elegant way of calling Sappho one of the Muses, whose brows were feigned to be wreathed with the violet. But let us now see with what a felicitous tenderness, covering as with a transparent veil a mournful but serene wisdom, she writes an elegiac inscription for the tomb, we may suppose, of an admired and favorite pupil, dying prematurely in maidenhood. Timas was beautiful and had beautiful hair, the envy of her female companions, who, when she died, cut off as a memento that admired ornament. Sappho seized that circumstance, and merely by her exquisite manner of relating, made it at once significant of the whole story, and suggestive of all the pathetic reflections which a modern poet would most probably have expanded.

FOR THE TOMB OF TIMAS, BY SAPPHO.

This dust is Timas', who dying unwed,

Received Persephone's sad-colored bed;

But from her, dead, did all her comrades fair,

With newly sharpened steel cut off that envied hair.

The use here made of so simple an incident will suggest to the scholar a trait of the Greek nation, viz., the passion for symbols and symbolical acts; and he will likewise deduce the critical corollary that every symbol and every symbolical act involves the dramatic imagination, and may be employed to produce a dramatic effect. The epigram is from the Anthology, and is one of those intended by Meleager when he speaks of the Roses of Sappho in contrast with the Lilies of Anyte and Moro. The subject treated in this exquisite epigram is often and feelingly dwelt upon by the female poets. To die unmarried, apo yapoio, was regarded by the Greeks, as indeed by all the kindred nations, as a great misfortune. The daughter of Jephthah wept her virginity on the mountains; and the most magnanimous of the tragic heroines, self-sacrificed to her

sisterly, as the Hebrew girl to her filial, loyalty, was not ashamed to regret that she must die without having known the sweet rites of espousal. The saintliness of celibacy belongs to that class of ideas, so available in modern poetry, which the wisest and purest pagans never knew-derivatives from the spirituality of Christian faith.

We have mentioned Anyte as one of the poets whose writings we intended to compare with those of Sappho. Here is an epicedium by the former on an occasion similar to that of the little poem last quoted.

ON ANTIBIA, BY ANYTE.

I.

Virgin Antibia I lament;

For whom, desiring her, did come
A-many bridegrooms to her father's home;
For beauty and for prudence eminent:

But Fate, anticipating all,

Upon their hopes did ruinously fall.

II.

Virgin Antibia I lament; whom many

Bridegrooms, desiring, sought her father's house:
For beauty and prudence famed; but of them all
Destroying Fate the hopes o'erwhelmed beforehand.

The second translation is literally line for line as in the original. It will be observed that the whole force of the epigram is in the word which in the second translation is rendered beforehand, but in the first is better expressed by the word anticipating. It obviously involves a conceit, and is therefore an epigram in our modern sense of the word; indeed exactly answers to Johnson's definition-"a short poem ending in a point" or better still to the simile, "a scorpion (in this case not venomous, but) carrying its sting in its tail." Its simplicity has been much admired by critics; and the expression is simple in the extreme, but the thought is not rather the reverse. Sappho's epicedium, on the other hand, is really simple in the thought, while that at the same time it is (what Anyte's is not) rich, pregnant, like those exuberant tresses of Timas, unbraided, ungemmed, and (what Anyte's again is not) splendid that is, vivid-in expression, so as that newly sharpened steel shone not more than its naked and illuminated words. But here is something better:

BY ANYTE.

Often upon the lamentable grave
Of the niaid untimely dying,

Kleino, the mother, wept her child beloved;

By name to the shade loud crying

Of Philanis: who, the marriage night unproved,

Of Acheron's river crossed the pallid wave.

Beautiful! and most interesting, as a proof how inconsolable then was mother's grief; and why? That it was hopeless, or at least cheerless, while such bereaved thought of that pale river and that mournful land